[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 18]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 24434]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       IN MEMORY OF STUDS TERKEL

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DANNY K. DAVIS

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 20, 2008

  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, on October 31st America lost 
its unofficial historian laureate: Louis ``Studs'' Terkel.
  Because he was so modest, Studs would deny it, but in fact he created 
a new genre of literature and history--the oral history.
  Studs and his tape recorder probed every corner of our collective 
consciousness with the delicacy and certainty of a brain surgeon.
  He interviewed the famous and the infamous, the rich and the poor, 
the celebrity and the common man and woman.
  Invariably he was able to extract something very special, a strand of 
the grand story which is America. He recorded those stories in books 
such as Division Street: America, Hard Times: An Oral History of the 
Great Depression, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and 
How They Feel About What They Do, The Good War, Race: What Blacks and 
Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession, Talking to Myself: 
A Memoir of My Times, Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on 
Death, Rebirth and Hunger for Faith, and Hope Dies Last: Keeping Faith 
in Difficult Times.
  Madam Speaker, we all have conversations of all types every day. But 
Studs was able to turn his conversations into oral history because he 
was not just a passive observer of history, he was an active maker of 
history.
  Studs earned a JD degree from the University of Chicago, but he never 
practiced law. Instead he apprenticed for his future career with a job 
in a writers project in the Works Progress Administration writing plays 
and learning the craft of acting.
  He went on to become one of the founders of the Chicago school of TV 
by creating and hosting ``Studs' Place'' until he was blacklisted 
during the McCarthy period.
  He spoke out for progressive causes, refusing to compromise his 
principles.
  He finally found a home at WFMT, Chicago's classical radio station, 
where he created his own version of talk radio with great conversation 
and an eclectic selection of music, signing off each broadcast with 
Woody Guthrie's classic line, ``Take it easy, but take it.''
  Studs had an irrepressible sense of humor and delighted in composing 
his own epitaph: ``Curiosity did not kill this cat.''
  Studs was as much a part of Chicago as his friends Nelson Algren and 
Mike Royko but like Mark Twain he is claimed by all America. We will 
miss him.

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